Stéphanie Boulay - SOCAN Song of the Week

Words + Music is the online magazine of SOCAN, the Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada. Just as SOCAN was formed in 1990 by the merger of its predecessor Canadian performing rights organizations PROCAN and CAPAC, their separate magazines merged in 1994 to form Words + Music. Our mission is to provide interesting, high-quality content about the increasingly exciting and

Rédacteur En Chef:

KILLY: capturing the energy of the moment

Five years after his first club performance, Scarborough’s Khalil Tatem – a.k.a. KILLY – is killin’ it for real: joints like 2017’s “Killamonjaro” and “No Romance” are racking up streams and views well into the eight figures.

Now, with his 11-track independent album Surrender Your Soul, and a summer world tour that will take him across the Atlantic as far as Warsaw, the 20-year-old is giving the world notice that the 6ix has exported a third R&B/hip-hop innovator from the land of Drake and The Weeknd.

“This is a sound that’s bigger than the city,” boasts KILLY about his 808s & Heartbreak–inspired flow, that electronically fluctuates his vocal delivery, leans heavily on ad-lib and vernacular, and is often framed by looped samples of subdued keyboard and synth passages. “There’s no one else that’s doing this anywhere.”

The boast isn’t idle, if public response is the mitigating litmus test: KILLY’s collective output, including the 2017 non-Surrender Your Soul tracks “Distance,” “Forecast,” and “No Romance” is approaching 50 million streams alone, while the rapidly rising rapper’s YouTube videos sit pretty at a viewership of 33 million. “It’s cool to finally see people realize it and take notice,” says KILLY. “It’s only been a year for me.”

In the sense of public exposure and aggregating a respectable fan base, KILLY is correct. But if you listen to his career progress, as noted in “Surrender (Intro),” where KILLY reveals that he “Had my first show at the end of ’15 (yeah)/First video came summer ’16 (yeah).” A large portion of Surrender Your Soul is all about the fact that his ascension is so rapid; the fact that it’s been independently released through his own Secret Sound Club label is even more impressive.

“Killamonjaro,” originally released in 2017, was the big breakthrough that made KILLY more than an underground sensation: it was the turning point that married instinct with spontaneity and best showcased KILLY’s magic. “For ‘Killamonjaro,’ I heard the beat and I wrote the structure of it,” he says, “and then I just told my engineer, ‘You have to record this song right now.’ We just linked up and I did it. It wasn’t anything more or anything less, really.

“I walk into the studio, a beat gets played, and I make the song on the spot. If it needs more production behind it, we’ll add guitars or add ad-libs. It’s less thinking, more feeling. For me, it’s very free-flowing, very liberal – it just happens, I just feel it. I don’t write down lyrics or anything, it’s just on-the-spot, in-the-moment. It’s capturing the energy of the moment.”

But as is the case for most artists, no one is an island. KILLY tapped into a community of producers for Surrender Your Soul that are both A-listers and novices. The former included Boi-1da (Drake, Eminem, Kendrick Lamar), Daxz (Drake, Travi$ Scott), WondaGurl (Drake, Jay Z, SZA), 1Mind (French Montana, Lil Yachty), and Wallis Lane (Drake, Logic, PARTYNEXTDOOR, Trey Songz).

KILLY is nonplussed about whether or not they have previous experience. “I don’t really care too much about whether they need the exposure, or if they’re established. If you make good music, you make good music,” he says. “I don’t care if you have 50 placements on the Top 100, or you have zero. I have 16yrold producing (“No Romance”) and I also have Boi-1da producing. For everyone, from all ages, all walks of life, it’s just a beautiful thing for everyone to be able to come together. The biggest notoriety of being established – it’s just who makes good music.”

“I walk into the studio, a beat gets played, and I make the song on the spot.”

Originally from Toronto, KILLY spent some of his early teens in his Bajan Filipino household in Victoria, B.C., before returning a few years ago – inspired by Speaker Knockerz, Kanye West, Tame Impala, Joey Bada$$ and James Blake – and obsessed with making his own impact.

“I’ve been doing this since I was young,” says KILLY. “I don’t remember a time when I wasn’t. I wake up, and that’s what I think about. Even before the success of it, it was always like that.”

He made his connections quickly, by getting involved in Toronto nightlife. “It was pretty rapid, all of this,” he says. “It just started out with me being surrounded by the culture, me being at parties, me around other creatives. Like that, you know? And then it just escalated to where the people I was listening to, I ended up being in the same room with [them]. It kind of avalanched.”

The secret to his success is tapping into his emotions. “The music is based off mood, based off energy,” says KILLY, who recently dropped “No Bad No Sad” as his new single. “It’s just the best way that I can capture how I feel, and how the people around me feel. My environment, my mental space – it’s all captured sonically.”

And while he provides the words, his producers provide the sonics. And again, KILLY determines his professional ties from the personal vibe he gets from a potential producer. “They’re all my friends,” he says, “and I feel that if I can connect with you on a personal level, I can connect with you on a musical level. Those are my peoples.”

And while he doesn’t go into much detail, it sounds like KILLY is preparing to take on a mentoring role, and form his own dynasty. “Everything we do is just me and my dogs,” he says. Secret Sound Club. Everything’s in-house.” Says his publicist, “Secret Sound Club was founded by KILLY, and is the label under which all his music has been released. It’s an indie label. We haven’t officially announced the other artists who are on Secret Sound Club.”

More recently, KILLY traveled beyond North American borders for the first time to cut some sides in Jamaica with “my good friend” WondaGurl. “We stayed in St. Elizabeth and Kingston,” he says, “and linked up with some musicians down there. I smoked strong and there were some good vibes. Can’t complain.”

He’s hoping to release the results in the fall, but until then he’s experiencing the “euphoric state” of concert performance, and introducing audiences to Surrender Your Soul. Whether or not future songs expand the subject of his music beyond himself, KILLY is unapologetic for shining the spotlight there.

“There’s no one that knows you as good as you, why wouldn’t you talk about that?” he asks rhetorically. “My stories are best for me.”

High Klassified: Maintaining Control

With a foot in the door of the U.S. hip-hop industry, producer High Klassified begins a new chapter of his career with the release of Kanvaz, his fifth, more eclectic and accessible, EP.

Things have changed lately for Kevin Vincent, a 25-year-old resident of Montréal’s Laval neighbourhood, who goes by the name High Klassified since he began producing in 2011.

Highly aware of the impact of “Comin Out Strong,” the huge hit by American rapper Future and Canadian pop star The Weeknd, which he co-wrote, the producer has now understood the importance of voices and lyrics. “I suddenly got a lot more public attention,” he says. “The thing is, a lot of people liked this collab, but didn’t necessarily like the rest of my repertoire, which is mostly instrumental. To them, the absence of lyrics is a damper.”

Far from thinking of himself as an avid music lover, High Klassified still wanted to pursue his own musical curiosity, if only to make his music catchier. Without wanting to please the Top 40 crowd at all costs, he nevertheless opened his musical horizons to the likes of Drake, Migos, and other heavy hitters of the genre. That appealed to him motre than diving blindly ahead into songwriting sessions sandwiched in between gaming, his favourite hobby.

“It’s mostly thanks to my friends and my girlfriend that I discovered a lot of new music,” says High Klassified. “I’m on the road a lot lately, so I like listening to other people’s Spotify playlists. I wanted my music to be featured on playlists, and shared by word of mouth, things like that.”

Hence the idea of asking New York-based singer and Fool’s Gold label-mate Leaf, and Montréal-based rapper Zach Zoya, to collaborate on two of Kanvaz’s songs. “Initially, I wanted to work with big names, but it’s just too much work chasing them. I didn’t want to wait three months for a single verse that I might end up finding so-so,” says High Klassified. Prior to this EP, he’d only once collaborated with a rapper (Mick Jenkins) on one of his solo projects. “I chose to work with people closer to me, and have more control over the creative process. My goal was to make the best possible music with what I have. But I mostly wanted to surf on the success of ‘Comin Out Strong’ as soon as I could.”

Photo: Benoit Rousseau

He gave himself a little over a year to come up with what he felt was his best material to date. Initially known for the dark, bass-heavy trap aesthetics of his first EP, Flexury (2012), High Klassified later demonstrated that he’s also a master of ethereal-yet-danceable atmospheres on his subsequent projects, notably on Kronostasis, which earned him the Electronic Music SOCAN Award in 2016. Therein lies the diversity of musical directions he wanted to explore on his fifth release. “Kanvaz is a painting, a representation of all the canvasses I can paint on,” he says. “It’s 100% my art. I wanted to show I can adapt to a whole range of BPMs, from trap to house.”

Despite a hard drive theft that hindered the pace of his work in early 2017, High Klassified clearly enjoyed going back to this a more intimate method of songwriting. Especially after 2016, where he put his art to the service of others, frequently travelling to Toronto to build a relationship with The Weeknd, whom he now sends tracks to directly via SMS.

“I much prefer working on personal projects, because all the credit is mine,” he says. “[Collaborations with big-name artists] is mostly good for my portfolio. It also boosts my credibility in the biz,” says the producer, who’s also created tracks for esteemed France-based rappers such as Nekfeu and Joke.

Of course, this acquired credibility comes with a certain amount of pressure, and High Klassifed feels it more and more. “As soon as you do a music placement with a big name, all eyes are on you, so you need to feed that hype,” he says. “I’m constantly stressed out about sending beats to people, not knowing if they’ll use them or not. But you know what? I won’t get into that too much, because the more I talk about it, the less it happens…”

Highly secretive about his upcoming projects, he’s currently planning his next tour, which hits Europe for a few weeks at the end of the summer. But more often than not, this proud Laval homeboy ends up homesick. “After three weeks of touring Asia, recently, I just couldn’t take it anymore,” he says. “All I wanted to do was come home!” laughs the young man, who still lives with his mom, and has built a professional studio in the basement of their house.

Yet High Klassified wants to spend a few months in Los Angeles, soon, to participate in some recording sessions. He doesn’t close any doors, except those of Montréal. “My girlfriend lives in the Canadiens tower, and that’s a real headache to me,” he says. “All that noise and entertainment bothers me. In Laval, I can concentrate on music and think about nothing else. That’s how I manage to create.”

Ezra Jordan from CTV’s The Launch performs at SOCAN offices

Ezra Jordan, one of the contending artists on the debut season of CTV’s hit music-competition program The Launch, treated our Toronto staff to a SOCAN Session on April 17, 2018, in the Harmony Lounge.

Playing keyboards, alongside his backing band of bass, guitar, and drums, Jordan performed his original songs for a half-hour, then answered a few questions from the crowd. Offering his own unique, catchy combination of R&B, soul, funk, and pop – and alternating vocally between his compelling baritone and striking falsetto – Jordan played six songs, including the singles “Only Got Eyes for Her” and “Lonely Now.”

Answering questions, he talked about how participating in The Launch was “a crazy whirlwind” full of non-stop activity, allowing for perhaps four hours of sleep each night. Jordan discussed how he gets many of his song ideas while driving, and tends to get started on songs with either a few lines, or a full-blown concept, on which he then works. Asked what more SOCAN can do for him, he jokingly answered, “Add a few zeros on my cheques!”

Since appearing on The Launch, where the 23-year-old impressed celebrity judges Fergie and Stephan Moccio, Jordan has seen his songs collectively earn more than 600,000 streams. While his success on the TV show has been an undoubtable career boost, Jordan — the son of SOCAN member singer-songwriters Amy Sky and Marc Jordan – has been performing since the age of four.

At age of 18, he suffered a life-threatening leg injury. Forced to put a hold on his piano training during the recovery process, he turned to singing and songwriting as an outlet. Back on his feet, Jordan joined JUNO Award-nominated artist Scott Helman as his keyboard player and backup singer. He then moved to L.A. to attend the Musician’s Institute, where he focused on his solo career.

SOCAN thanks Jordan Ezra for entertaining our staff, and wishes him continued success.